Four years of gossip built on one squad list
November 2022. Luis Enrique trims Spain’s World Cup squad for Qatar and Fabian Ruiz is not on it. The midfielder had just finished a heavy summer, and within weeks he was a Paris Saint-Germain player. That was all the Spanish press needed. Two men, one omission, and a fallout that supposedly explained everything.
Then Luis Enrique landed in Paris the following summer. Every press conference, the same question came back. Ruiz says his answer never changed once.
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“This time, it was my turn”
He has gone over it again. “When he didn’t call me up, and then when he arrived in Paris, everyone asked me whether we had fallen out or whether there was a conflict between us. I always said: ‘No, we have a very good relationship’,” the Spaniard said.
His reading of it is simple enough. A coach picking from that Spanish midfield pool was always going to leave somebody furious. Somebody with a case. That somebody happened to be him, in that particular week, for that particular tournament. He has not carried it since.
Paris bet on the same man and won a European Cup
The record has done the arguing for him. Ruiz says he was pleased when PSG appointed his old Spain coach, convinced the style would suit the dressing room and drag more out of players who had been coasting. Three seasons later he sits at the centre of everything Paris do, with a Champions League medal picked up under the same manager who once left him at home.
“With Luis Enrique, we have a great relationship and we have won a lot together,” he said. Whether that settles anything is another matter. The Luis Enrique conversation never travels alone in Paris these days, not with the Ballon d’Or race running and Marseille waiting.
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